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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 11:38 am
Time: 11:38 am
Results for ex-offenders, debts
1 results foundAuthor: Tran-Leung, Marie Claire Title: Debt Arising From Illinois’ Criminal Justice System: Making Sense of the Ad Hoc Accumulation of Financial Obligations Summary: When a person enters the criminal justice system, a complicated, ad hoc system of financial obligations awaits. The financial obligations go by many different names: fines, fees, surcharges, assessments, restitution, just to name a few. And they are scattered through the Illinois Code, making them even more difficult to identify. Yet, when a person exits the criminal justice system, all of these financial obligations often converge to create a significant barrier to successful reentry. As the government branch responsible for collecting and disbursing these financial obligations, the Illinois judiciary has long recognized how complicated the system of financial obligations is. In describing the “plethora of user fees and surcharges,” Chief Justice Benjamin K. Miller of the Illinois Supreme Court remarked in 1991: “The complexity of the structure of various charges is such that they are not uniform and are confusing. It has been impossible for the court system to apply the charge in a consistent and coherent manner.” Little has changed in the last eighteen years. Today, the Administrative Office of Illinois Courts distributes to chief judges the Manual on Fines and Fees, a 500-page cheat sheet of all civil and criminal financial obligations authorized by Illinois statutes and the different funds they flow into. The universe of financial obligations is best classified by their purpose. Restitution, for example, compensates victims for their losses and attempts to make them whole. Fines punish the defendant for his actual conduct. Traditionally, courts calibrate restitution and fines to the particular facts of a case. By contrast, fees, the third and last type of financial obligation, tend not to be so refined. Instead, they usually aim to recover the costs incurred by the government in running the criminal justice system. When viewed in isolation, each financial obligation seems unobjectionable. They do not, however, operate in isolation. Rather, they accumulate at multiple points from the pre-trial stage to the last day of correctional supervision, creating significant debt for people who eventually exit the criminal justice system. In a study of men returning home to Chicago after being incarcerated in Illinois prisons, one out of five men reported owing money because of child support, fines, restitution, court costs, supervision fees, and other types of financial obligations. Of this group, nearly three-fourths found those debts difficult to pay down. Details: Chicago: Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, 2009. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 25, 2011 at: http://www.povertylaw.org/advocacy/publications/debt-report.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://www.povertylaw.org/advocacy/publications/debt-report.pdf Shelf Number: 123138 Keywords: Ex-Offenders, DebtsFeesFinesOffenders, Financial ObligationsRestitution |